Nexus n-1

by Naam, Ramez

  There. SanchezLab018 came online in his head. He navigated its folder tree. There. Copy.

  Rangan flubbed his first password attempt. He shook his head. He flubbed it again, swore softly. "Sorry… just a little nervous here." [ 10 percent complete ]

  Myers put one burly hand on Rangan's shoulder. "Take your time," he said. "And no tricks. Think about what you're doing here."

  Kade remote logged into the machine, jumped to super-user status, got ready to tweak the file date and time stamps after the copy was complete.

  [ 25 percent complete ]

  Rangan nodded. He typed his password again, and he was in.

  "OK, checking the lab experiments directory." Rangan browsed folders. Kade knew damn well that directory was up to date.

  [ 40 percent complete ]

  "Yeah, it's out of date," Rangan lied. He entered commands to recopy the data. "That should do it."

  Myers's face was a mask. "Fourteen minutes left. And we still need those Nexus vials from your fridge."

  [ 50 percent complete ]

  Rangan nodded. "OK. Pulling down the data from last night… " He opened up a window, poked a tiny hole in the firewall to connect to Simonyi Field, started pulling down logfiles.

  [ 60 percent complete ]

  "This shouldn't take more than a minute or two," he explained.

  It took a hundred and eight seconds.

  [ 80 percent complete ]

  "And copying over the documentation," Rangan said.

  Myers frowned, looked like he was about to say something.

  Ilya cut in, stalling, "God, can you make it any fucking easier for them?"

  "Jesus, Ilya," Rangan said. "We've been over this already!"

  "That's enough, both of you," Myers said. "Power this down, Shankari. Now."

  The copy was 91 per cent complete. Fuck fuck fuck. It would be obvious that they'd been trying to change something!

  Rangan started to object. Myers held up his hand.

  "Hold on," Myers said. He brought one finger to his right ear, plugged it, looked away from them, apparently listening to someone speaking to him.

  Kade held his breath.

  [ 96 percent complete ]

  [ 98 percent complete ]

  He let his breath out. The pen was rattling nervously against the desk. Myers scowled at him in annoyance, took a half step back.

  [ 100 percent complete ] Kade jumped in his terminal window to change the time and date stamps on the files. One set done, second set done…

  Myers pulled his hand away from his ear, looked over at them.

  "Shut it down, I said. Now."

  There was a third set to do…

  Rangan gulped, nodded, and issued the shutdown command.

  Windows started to close. The last time stamp change… Kade hit ENTER in the terminal window in his mind, got the command running. There, it was going, going, going…

  The command finished.

  A split second later his terminal window flashed, then disappeared. Session disconnected by host. A moment later the virtual drive SanchezLab018 disappeared. The happy shutdown face appeared on the screen. Kade wanted to scream in triumph. He did no such thing.

  "Take this down to the car," Myers told Lewis. The other officer started pulling plugs and gathering up equipment. "Now, take us to your Nexus stocks."

  Ten minutes later they were back outside. It was done. Myers had everything. Well, almost everything.

  Warren Becker finished reading the transcripts of the three Nexus technical briefings. It was sobering stuff. The potential for abuse as a coercion technology was huge. Slavery. Prostitution. Worse. He thought of his two teenage girls, of the things he'd seen in the field, the horrors some men were capable of. He pushed it out of his mind.

  The geopolitical implications were just as bad. Remote assassination. Subversion of political enemies. Everything the Chinese were doing, available on the cheap. This technology had to be kept out of the wild.

  He dictated a memo outlining what they'd found and the dangers, labeled it TOP SECRET, and distributed it to key people across ERD, Homeland Security, FBI, CIA, State, and the Pentagon.

  After that he opened another file on his terminal and reviewed its contents. Presidential Order 594 – Eliminating and Preventing Uncontrolled Non-Human Intelligences. Scenario 7c – HIVE INTELLIGENCE. He stared at it for long minutes. Could Nexus be used to create Borgs? Ilyana Alexander had said as much in her interview. He dictated a second memo on that possibility, sent it up the chain to the White House. It was above his pay grade.

  He checked the time. 9 o'clock on a Sunday night. Claire would be upset. He packed up his things and headed out the door. The lights dropped and the room sealed itself behind him.

  There was a light on in Holtzmann's office. Becker poked his head in. Holtzmann was there, working away at his terminal.

  "Martin," Becker said, "you're here late."

  Holtzmann flicked his eyes at Becker. "I could say the same of you," he said. "Shouldn't you be home with Claire and the girls?"

  Becker smiled wryly, hoisted his briefcase for a moment. "Heading there. What do you make of the Nexus 5 risk level?"

  Holtzmann shrugged. "If Nexus 5 ever gets out, it'll spread like wildfire. Permanent integration means a user only ever needs to procure a single dose for a lifetime effect. You can't fight that on the supply side."

  Becker nodded glumly. He thought, We're underfunded. Understaffed. The fight gets harder every year.

  "And the abuse potential is high," Becker said.

  "That's not the problem," Holtzmann replied.

  "Pardon?" Becker raised an eyebrow.

  Holtzmann sighed. "The problem is that the utility is so high. People will find a thousand ways to use something like this. Communication. Entertainment. Mental health applications. Education. The potential is vast. Demand will be rampant."

  Becker narrowed his eyes. "Martin, this is clearly illegal, on multiple fronts. Think about the coercion potential, the abuses the Chinese have already put it to…"

  Holtzmann waved his hand. "Of course. It's all about the downsides. Never mind the upsides." He frowned. "This isn't what I came here for."

  Becker shook his head. "Martin, I know you're frustrated. But you know the reality. The transhuman implications alone…"

  Holtzmann frowned. "Would it be so bad? To be smarter? To touch another mind? Are you sure we're doing the right thing?"

  Becker went still. Had Holtzmann just said that? He spoke slowly, carefully. "Martin, you're tired. I think you should go home now. Anne will glad to see you."

  He turned and walked away calmly, leaving Holtzmann to his terminal and his thoughts.

  9

  TRAINING DAYS

  Training for Kade's ERD mission began immediately. Monday night he was instructed to report to room 3004 in the Health Sciences Building. There he met his trainer, Kevin Nakamura. Nakamura was fortyish, graying at the temples, fit, and serious.

  The older man was CIA, he told Kade, but doing a favor for his old agency the ERD. He and Kade would meet nightly for the eight weeks leading up to the International Society for Neuroscience meeting in Bangkok. Nakamura would teach Kade to keep his cool – to lie without being detected. He'd drill Kade on potential scenarios of interacting with Shu and the strategies for each. And together they would implant a false persona in Kade's memories that he could invoke if needed.

  Much of the training happened inside a pair of VR goggles and headphones, with a portable stress meter observing him. There, a simulated Shu had simulated conversations with Kade, conversations that called on him to lie, to hide his assignment from the ERD, to hide the contact he'd had with them.

  Every time he lied, the stress meter caught it.

  "You'll improve," Nakamura told him.

  The later part of the first session was the implantation of the cover story memories. It was hazy – hard to remember clearly. Nakamura injected him with something. A non-sedative hyp
notic. The world became dreamlike. What the goggles showed him, what the headphones told him, Kade could only recall in fragments.

  At the end of the session, he felt strung out, mentally exhausted. He returned to his apartment, collapsed onto his bed and slept for ten hours.

  Every night, they did the same.

  While Kade trained, Rangan brooded.

  They skipped lab one day, went out to Golden Gate Park, and took Ilya with them. Kade opened his mind to theirs, showed them everything the ERD had briefed him on, showed them what he knew of his mission. Then Rangan opened his mind to Kade and Ilya, showed them what had happened in that ERD cell. They'd hit him with a pain beyond anything he could imagine.

  Rangan was angry. He wanted to hit them back. He wanted to arm himself and Kade and Ilya with defenses against that ERD attack. He wanted to arm them with their own weapons. It would be important, Rangan said. If Kade were going on this mission, he shouldn't go unarmed.

  The invitation to the ISFN meeting and the private workshop to follow arrived in the second week. Kade's advisor was delighted. Important people were taking note of his work, she told him. Kade pretended surprise, pretended joy, found only dread and loathing inside.

  The training continued. He learned to use a mantra to activate the false memories and anti-memories. The party had been ended by a noise complaint. What encounter with the ERD? It was bewildering, snapping in and out of different states of mind. It left Kade paranoid and edgy. If memories could be changed like this, how did he know what he remembered was true? Had more happened in ERD custody? Had they erased it from his mind? Was there a mantra that would unlock that? Was there a mantra that would turn him into someone else entirely?

  "That's normal," Nakamura told him. "Everyone questions their own memories as they go through this."

  That didn't reassure Kade.

  Saturday, after his training, he went to the Mephistopheles Club where Rangan had a gig. Kade had a fine view of the DJ booth. Rangan seemed subdued. The music was more ponderous than Kade was used to. Rangan usually played flashcore or elemental on a Saturday night, something high-energy, driving, fun to move to. Tonight his set bordered on blackbeat – heavier, harder, darker. Fewer people danced than usual.

  On Sunday night, Nakamura told him that while the memory implantation was going well, the other parts of the training were going poorly. Kade was a rotten liar, it seemed. He got nervous. And when he got nervous, the sensor knew.

  "Is this really necessary?" he asked Nakamura.

  "Shu may have off-the-charts intelligence. She has an elite special forces bodyguard. She has access to top-of-the-line technology. If you aren't absolutely perfect at dissembling, she will pick it up."

  They kept trying for another week. It was no use.

  "Your pulse just shot up again," Nakamura told him the next Thursday. "Your pupils dilated. If we don't make progress soon, we'll turn to drugs. We have to hide your anxiety."

  Drugs, eh? Alternatively…

  That night, Kade didn't collapse into deep sleep. Instead he sketched out a possible new Nexus OS app. A tool to manage his mental state around Shu. If he could suppress the anxiety signals passing through his amygdala, boost serotonin, suppress noradrenaline… If he directly modulated his breathing rate and his pulse… Then he could keep himself serene. It was conceptually simple, but they'd always resisted playing this deeply with their emotions. He would have to be extremely careful…

  Kade closed his eyes, went Inside, and invoked his development environment. Windows blossomed in his inner sight. New project. Serenity package. He had a lot of work to do.

  Weeks passed. The sessions with Nakamura improved slightly, but not enough. Kade worked away on his serenity package. He was almost there.

  At the end of the fourth week, Rangan came to him with something. He exuded good cheer. Kade hadn't seen Rangan thi happy since before the bust.

  [rangan]Ready for a surprise?

  [kade]Sure. Bring it on.

  A file transfer request blinked in Kade's mind. He accepted it. A pair of files came across. One was source code. The other was an application. He had no idea what it did. Then he saw the name. Bruce Lee. Oh no…

  [rangan]OK, so launch that app. But don't hit any buttons yet, OK?

  Kade groaned inwardly. Rangan had always dreamed of this app. It was ridiculous.

  [kade]I don't really think hand-to-hand combat is what this is about…

  [rangan]Come on. You're a spy now. You need to be able to fight.

  [kade]But I won't have the muscle, or the endurance, or...

  [rangan]Dude, just launch the app.

  Kade sighed and fired it up. His vision came alive with targeting circles, buttons for attacks and defenses, a toggle for automatic versus manual mode, sliders to change the auto-mode AI's emphasis on attack versus defense.

  [rangan]The game engine's from the crack of Fist of the Ninja that went online last month. It takes standard VR body shapes and vectors. I just hooked it up to our Nexus body interfaces.

  [kade]Uhh... Rangan, thank you, really, but…

  [rangan]Oh, don't thank me yet! You probably don't want to be mashing buttons, so you just click on the target. It uses our object list to track people and so on... And then you tell it to attack. You can slide this here for how much focus to put on attacking versus defending. And over here if you want to pause. Pretty great, eh?

  Kade couldn't believe they were having this conversation.

  [kade]Yeah. It's great. Really. I mean, thank y–

  [rangan]OK. I can see you're not convinced. No worries. You can thank me after you're forced to kick someone's ass with it.

  [kade]I'm not really sure...

  [rangan]Come on, let's take it to the gym.

  An hour later, they limped out of the gym. Kade ached everywhere. His body had thrown a bewildering array of kicks and strikes at the punching bag, most of which he was sure had hurt him more than they would have damaged any real-world assailant. His knuckles were bloody. His right wrist and left ankle both ached from times when Bruce Lee had driven him to hit the punching bag far harder than he really should have. And then there was the moment at which the targeting system had decided his target was the wall instead of the punching bag…

  Rangan thought it was hilarious and promised to fix the bugs. Kade just hurt.

  10

  CHANGES

  Watson Cole sat on the rocks and stared out at the Pacific. This was a beautiful place in its own desolate way. The little town of Todos Santos was thirty miles south down the road. The beach was better there, more sand, fewer rocks. The tourists sunned themselves and sipped margaritas, delighting in their discovery of a quaint little paradise away from the hustle and bustle of Cabo San Lucas. Up here, further from Cabo, the beach was rough and narrow. The sea came in strong against the rocks and a thin strip of brownish sand. Some hardy scrub grass clung to the land. There was little reason for tourists to make it this far north.

  He'd made it here to his hidey-hole two nights ago. It had been a tense escape. The contacts and face shapers had fooled the biometrics at the border, but there had been little he could do about his size. He was a conspicuous character. If the ERD relied more on human intel… Well, he'd made it.

  The nightmares woke him every morning now. Arman, the idealistic prosecutor. The sight of his family dead in their home, murdered in retribution for daring to bring charges against the wrong corrupt nephew. Temir. The heartbreak of seeing his village razed by the army, looking for rebels that weren't there.

  And Lunara. Her most of all. The last moments of her life… If it wasn't for Lunara, he wouldn't be a fugitive today. He'd be out there some place, across the waves. Somewhere in central Asia, probably. A "military advisor." Running special ops missions. Suppressing the rebels. Earning commendations. Maybe in Officer Candidate School.

  Instead, he was a wanted man.

  Wats had no regrets. He'd made his choices. Being captured in the Kazakh Mountains
was the best thing that had ever happened to him. It certainly hadn't been the easiest thing. It had been the most painful, most confusing, most troubling six months of his life. But it had opened his eyes. And eyes, once opened, seldom closed again.

  He remembered another beach. A dry beach. The dry bones of the Aral Sea. The desert where once there had been water. The inland sea the Russians had drained to irrigate their crops further north. Nurzhan had taken him on walks there, towards the end, after his captivity had turned into something else.